salmon wrote:PS. this is a phase that MANY meditators go through...it'll pass

I do suspect this is the case with many people indeed.

Any personal experience to share on what are some of the phases you guys went through and the strategies you employ to keep practicing? Personally, I went through 4 months of meditative and mindful bliss before getting all wound up in worldly matters for 6months and then coming back a little stronger in the practice the past 2 months. I am determine to keep at it this time round but have a strong suspicion that is just wishful thinking.

Not quite a personal one since I have a teacher to always put me back in place. (Yes, I have thought about dropping it all and just running away into the forests to meditate many moons ago).

A friend's friend gave up his civil service job believing that he received the calling to go forth. He left his fiance, sold his apartment and made plans for a famous temple in Myanmar. His parents objected and were pleading and crying at the airport as he left. Less than one month later, he came back. He found no peace after he ordained. But he had given up his job (which he can no longer get back), his life and his house. He came back without a single cent to his name.

We met him when my friend brought him to our meditation centre to see our teacher for advise.

Sad...but a hard lesson for him, and good reminder for the rest of us.

No obstacles to maintaining or achieving a decent standard of living, but surely on the whole less interest in seeking the bigger and better house, the fancier car, the more glorious vacation, less infatuation with the pleasure provided by material goods and more contentment with what one has. So if you define higher standard of living by consumption in dollar terms, yes, on the whole lower. But not to a dramatic degree, I'd say.

I don't know if this will help OP but here is something I pulled out of Basic Themes by Ajaan Lee

D. The Ten Corruptions of Insight...4. Passaddhi: The body is at peace and the mind serene, to the point where you don't want to encounter anything in the world. You see the world as being unpeaceful and you don't want to have anything to do with it. Actually, if the mind is really at peace, everything in the world will also be at peace. People who are addicted to a sense of peace won't want to do any physical work or even think about anything, because they're stuck on that sense of peace as a constant preoccupation.

khlawng wrote:I don't know if this will help OP but here is something I pulled out of Basic Themes by Ajaan Lee

D. The Ten Corruptions of Insight...4. Passaddhi: The body is at peace and the mind serene, to the point where you don't want to encounter anything in the world. You see the world as being unpeaceful and you don't want to have anything to do with it. Actually, if the mind is really at peace, everything in the world will also be at peace. People who are addicted to a sense of peace won't want to do any physical work or even think about anything, because they're stuck on that sense of peace as a constant preoccupation.